1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a spoken-instruction controlled system for an automotive vehicle, and more specifically to a system for an automotive vehicle which can activate a single actuator repeatedly or actuators sequentially by depressing a recognition switch repeatedly within a predetermined time period after a spoken instruction has been recognized by a speech recognizer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, there is a well-known speech recognizer which can activate various actuators in response to human spoken instructions. When this speech recognizer is mounted on an automotive vehicle, the car radio, for instance, can be turned on or off in response to a driver's spoken instruction such as "Car radio on" or "Car radio off". The speech recognizer is very convenient because various spoken instructions can be recognized in order to control various actuators, without depressing switches; however, there are some problems involved in applying this system to an automotive vehicle. For instance, when the speech recognizer is used for automatically tuning a car radio to a preferable broadcasting station or a preferable program in response to a spoken instruction, since the automatic tuning operation stops at a first station to which a car radio is first tuned, in order to select a preferable broadcasting station or radio program it is usually necessary to utter the same spoken instruction repeatedly and additionally depress the recognition switch repeatedly. These are very troublesome for the driver.
On the stepwise operations as described above, there are various cases such as adjustment of remote-controlled fender mirrors, presetting of fan speeds in an airconditioning system, adjustment of passenger compartment air temperature in the airconditioning system, opening or closing of door windows in a power-operated window system, etc.
Furthermore, in the prior-art speech recognizer, the recognition switch is usually depressed by the hand; however, since the recognition switch should be depressed repeatedly in the case of the speech recognizer of this kind as described above, it is also important to select the position at which the switch is disposed.
A more detailed description of a typical speech recognizer will be made with reference to the attached drawing in conjunction with the present invention under DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS.